Beyond The Grave

The endorsement of Ed Miliband by Baroness Smith, John Smith's widow, is not because he is a social conservative like that late, great opponent of abortion, easier divorce, unregulated drinking and gambling, and unrestricted Sunday trading. Had Smith lived, then he would certainly have won the 1997 Election, and this country would not have spent 13 years vacillating over the status of cannabis, or toying with super-casinos, or watching lap-dancing clubs, a term which we had never heard a decade ago, proliferate on our streets.

Ed Miliband would vote against any attempt to restrict abortion, although he may well share his mentor, Gordon Brown's, strong opposition to assisted suicide. He would vote against any attempt to make divorce more difficult, although he may be open to persuasion on enabling any marrying couple to register their marriage as bound by the law prior to 1969 as regards grounds and procedures for divorce, and to enable any religious organisation to specify that any marriage which it conducts shall be so bound, requiring it to counsel couples accordingly.

But I increasingly doubt that he holds neoliberal views on alcohol, gambling, drugs, vice or seven-day working weeks. The endorsement of Lady Smith suggests most strongly that he does not, just as it suggests most strongly that, like her late husband, he is not an economic neoliberal at all, and therefore, unlike his brother, not a geopolitical neoconservative, either. In which case, he no doubt recognises that we cannot deliver the welfare provisions and the other public services that our people have rightly come to expect unless we know how many people there are in this country, unless we control immigration properly, and unless we insist that everyone use spoken and written English to the necessary level.

And in which case, we cannot exclude the possibility of his common ground with those who refuse to allow climate change to be used as an excuse to destroy or prevent secure employment, to drive down wages or working conditions, to arrest economic development around the world, to forbid the working classes and non-white people from having children, to inflate the fuel prices that always hit the poor hardest, or to restrict either travel opportunities or a full diet to the rich. He may seem a lost cause on that one. But he need not be.

Ed Miliband is not a simple heir to John Smith. Alas, no candidate is, a surefire sign that, in the medium to long run, the Labour Party is finished. But at least he is aware of, he understands, he values, and he is prepared to draw on the Radical Liberal, Tory populist, trade union, co-operative, Christian Socialist, Social Catholic and Distributist, and other roots of the Labour Movement; the socially and culturally conservative, strongly patriotic tendencies within the British Left's traditional electoral base.

Indeed, in some ways, he may even be better than Smith ever lived to be. Had Smith become Prime Minister, then he would have become a lot more sceptical about the EU; the early signs of that were already appearing during the Maastricht debates. And if Smith had ever legislated for devolution rather than saying that the question was answered, at least in the Scottish case, by the fact of his own Premiership, then he would rapidly have become as disillusioned with that whole project as Gordon Brown did. Yes, as disillusioned as that. But not least, though not exclusively, because of his closeness to Brown, Ed Miliband is almost certainly already there, both on the EU and on the breakup of the Labour Movement by means of the breakup of the United Kingdom.